The Sacrilegious Sarah Palin

The American Conservative ^ | 4-27-14 | Rod Dreher

[Flame Retardant]

Man, the 12 minute speech Sarah Palin gave to the NRA convention is awful. It's just witless, red-meat blathering, delivered in that nasal whine of hers that makes it sound like she's chewing wads of tinfoil. For people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.

Fast-forward in the video to the 6:30 mark, though, and listen to what she says about terrorists. It's part of a long harangue about lily-livered liberals, delivered in such a way that makes Archie Bunker sound like Cicero. Money quote:

"Oh, but you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

OK, stop. Not only is this woman, putatively a Christian, praising torture, but she is comparing it to a holy sacrament of the Christian faith. It's disgusting--but even more disgusting, those NRA members, many of whom are no doubt Christians, cheered wildly for her....

Palin and all those who cheered her sacrilegious jibe ought to be ashamed of themselves. For us Christians, baptism is the entry into new life. Palin invoked it to celebrate torture. Even if you don't believe that waterboarding is torture, surely you agree that it should not be compared to baptism, and that such a comparison should be laughed at. What does it say about the character of a person that they could make that joking comparison, and that so many people would cheer for it. Nothing good--and nothing that does honor to the cause of Jesus Christ.

If I thought that kind of hateful declaration and abuse of the Christian religion was what conservatism stood for, I wouldn't be able to call myself a conservative...

[G Larry]

How mindless are you?

1) We’re talking about a process that is (or was) a standard part of Officer training.
2) We’re talking about applying only to a few Terrorist kingpins in the midst of an asymetrical war on terror.
3) In particular, KSM gave up data that saved countless lives.
4) It was NOT applied to the general population of “Unlawfull Combatants” at Gitmo.
5) Pretending that my support of the above, is transferable to a concern about the U.S. government doing the same to its citizens, is just plain nuts.

[ansel12]

Because it isn’t disingenuous, and it sure isn’t all “Green Berets” and it is 10s of thousands including I imagine, civilian employees, all federal, and of course NATO and allies.

“”Ah, so you don’t mind a little government-sponsored psychological torture then. How nice for you. Hope it comes to your family first.””

Government techniques, used almost entirely on government employees.

[lentulusgracchus]

Dreher lives in Louisiana. I believe he was born there.

Really? He writes like he hated it and hopes never to go home. Like Sinclair Lewis, who gained status and fame by despising his Midwestern roots and noisily repining, in his novels about Gopher Prairie, for the leafy boulevards of Paris, afternoons spent drinking wine and dissipating, and the idle palaver of 19th-century left-wing intellectual wannabe's about the latest French novel. But perhaps I'm overcharacterizing him a bit.

[kcvl]

Levin took aim at Rod Dreher at The American Conservative, calling him a “nasty creep” for basically writing that Palin’s ‘baptism’ remark was blasphemy and suggesting she was comparing torture to a “holy sacrament of the Christian faith.”

“Everybody knows what she meant,” Levin said, “everybody knows it was a laugh line.” Levin continues, “But Sarah Palin is easy pickins so they pile on. Tough guy, huh?”<=> Levin points out that Sarah Palin is out there “breaking her neck trying to get conservatives elected and trying to keep the base strong” and she’s dismissed by people on “our side.”

“This is how “our side” treats “our side,”” Levin adds. “You’ll never seen the left or Democrats do that to a woman on their side ever!”

[Mrs. Don-o]

Last year Dreher wrote a book called "The Little Way of Ruthie Leming" about his childhood in Louisiana and his sister's (years-later)cancer death, in the course of which Dreher came to ardently revere the level of spiritual and physical support she got from family, neighbors, church --- that true embodiment of "community" they had in his Louisiana town.

I believe that shortly after the publication of this book, Dreher and his wife and kids moved back to Louisiana to rec-connect with all that in a highly personal way.

So you may want to re-calibrate your impression.

[lentulusgracchus]

Guess I do, which makes it all the more incomprehensible that he is a liberal Republican who hates on Palin et al.

Maybe it's just his day job.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I don't understand him to be a liberal Republican. He's been a journalist for 25 years or more, used to be the conservative editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News, and is somewhat to the right of, I would guess, at least 60% of the Republican party.

The unexpected complexity may come from the fact that he's much more a cultural, rather than a political, writer. He is certainly not "hating on" Palin. He is a fairly recent adult convert to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and he takes the faith and morals and the sacraments of this faith seriously and literally. Maybe more so, possibly, that adherents of other faith communities who see it as just a symbolic thing.

So if Palin has managed to treat with a certain rhetorical levity both torture and the Sacrament of Baptism, she would be well advice not to do so again.

I am certain Dreher respects Palin's excellent qualities as a woman, as a conservative activist, and as a pro-life advocate.

[x]

Dreher's not a liberal and doesn't deserve all the abuse (Who does, really? Name-calling is just a way of taking anything seriously).

I'm not sure Dreher really does respect Sarah Palin, though. From what he writes, it sounds like he turned against her very early on -- a few weeks after she'd been nominated, back when the rest of us still found some hope and something to praise in her. If Dreher had respect for Palin, he would have left out some of the things he's said about her.

[Mrs. Don-o]

When I said Dreher respects Plain, I didn’t mean he favored her especially amongst the pack of Republican candidated. I just meant he did not trash her for her sex, her motherhood, or her conservative values as such. He may have had a solid critique of what she had to offer as a candidate -— without disrespecting her.

[ansel12]

Rod Dreher does “hate Palin, and he didn’t vote for her/McCain in 2008.

Here is RedState in January, 2009:
“Dreher also proves to be overtaken by Parkeritis, which would be defined as an ostensibly conservative writer that hates Sarah Palin so much that it seems to make him lose his mind in the process.”

Dreher:
“”What would a healthy conservative populism look like? Not like Sarah Palin’s saccharine shtick, which candy-coated conventional Republican ideas with a bright red culture-war gloss. Palinism co-opts and deflects legitimate populist anger by allowing its adherents to hate elites without really challenging the system. A true conservative populism would not tolerate an arrangement in which the few profit at the expense of the many – which, no matter how many flags she waves or hockey games she attends, is all Palin offers.””

---

Here he is today, on gay marriage:
“”The problem is tolerance is not the goal here; mandatory affirmation is, to the point where individuals and institutions who won’t affirm are to be marginalized and punished. The other day I saw a tweet in which someone said that Ross Douthat, a Catholic who articulately defends the teachings of his Church on human sexuality, ought to be thought of as suffering from a psychological disorder. This is how religious and political disagreement becomes a matter of pathology — not a moral argument to be grappled with, but a disease to be cured. This is where we’re headed. It would be wise for conservative Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others to quit fighting a battle they (we) lost a long time ago, and start figuring out how to defend, constitutionally, our religious and cultural institutions from the coming legal assault. Ironically, if we traditionalists are going to be able to hold our ground, we’re going to have to function as libertarians.””

---

In 2012:
“Should Conservatives Vote Obama?”
“”This makes perfect sense to me. To the extent that I care about economics and foreign policy, I would be likely to vote Obama. It’s not because I particularly favor Obama’s policies, but he is less bad than Romney would be, in my view.””

In 2012, it looks like he leaned Obama when you read his articles.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Ya mean the kingdom of heaven is actually worth more than the kingdom of this mortal soil? SAY IT AIN’T SO ANSEL!

[ansel12]

You have got to quit the stalking, and don’t lie by implying the opposite of my religious beliefs in your strange and dishonest personal attack.

Do you realize that your post is not even relevant and that you jumped on this thread merely to start with your personal assault, rather than to actually participate?

This is your very first post on this thread, and you ignored the entire thread, to do your stalking bit, something that you do a lot as you stalk.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Ha, ha, ha, we’re all free to comment on whatever we want here.

If you’re going to act like a dolt, then expect to get addressed like one, from time to time.

It’s only biblical.

[ansel12]

They ask you not to stalk for a number of reasons, one example is what you are already doing right now.

[HiTech RedNeck]

When I see a foolish woof on something that’s bumped in my face, well I sometimes answer foolish woofs the way they deserve. It would not matter if it was ansel12 or the man in the moon.

False stalking accusations do not take away my right to do this.

I don’t go following you for fun (what would that make me, a masochist?)

[HiTech RedNeck]

But one hilarious thing you always do when called out is to flag the “moderator”. Because of auto-correction in Freeper names, some goofy “moder_ator” gets flagged instead. That is not an administrative account, it is someone’s weird idea of being funny. You should have caught this by now but no, you keep on with this blind foolishness. That’s like whipping out a rubber knife to defend yourself, over and over and over. You wonder why you get treated like a clown?

[ansel12]

Being a stalker, nothing about a thread of over 200 hundred posts interests you, instead you want to hijack the thread into a continuation of your carrying an obsessive and continuous personal grudge from thread to thread.

I guess this thread is over now, and it turns into one of your grudge threads?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Well what do YOU do, stalk all the libertarian discussions?

[Flame Retardant]

Ironically, if we traditionalists are going to be able to hold our ground, we’re going to have to function as libertarians.

Interesting insight....

[ansel12]

It isn’t an insight, it proves how far left he is, and why he is so warm towards Obama.

It is just more evidence of how wrong he is.